I’ve been testing a lot of concepts (some old, some new) with a test project and this post is about what I’ve learned, and what else needs to be explored.

CSVToDictionary and AJAX

It’s easier to maintain a separate text file for populating lookup dicts. Use the AJAX object to read the text and then CSVToDictionary to populate the dict. Remove the double-quote marks when using a text file. This makes it easier to read.

Newlines in text files

When extracting text using AJAX, newlines might be necessary, but escape characters do not seem to be recognised. Therefore, I ended up using escape characters, but had to process it (using search-replace) during extraction.

Containers

Containers have been extremely useful especially in terms of debugging messages. For every object I need to debug, a debug Text object is created, and querying the instance of the object will always point to the same objects of the container. No additional picking is necessary. This is probably the most important aspect of my testing.

Enumerations

There are no real enumerations in C2, but simply assigning a constant number to a recognisable variable name is good enough. For example, in the case where the z-layer of a logical position needs to be identified by keyword, I use Z_TILE=0, Z_WALLS=1, etc.

AI

Although a topic unto itself, the main takeaway from doing AI, is how triggers are setup in Tiled and how it’s set up in C2 to respond to triggers.

There are area triggers, which are set up in Tiled. These are positional, and in the test project, they included a ‘facing’ property, which meant that the trigger is fired only when the player is facing a certain direction. The trigger’s name is the string that will end up being called by C2. I opted to use the ‘name’ attribute in Tiled instead of the relegating it to a property because it’s clearer to see the object name in the Tiled viewport.

Some triggers are set up in C2, especially other kinds of interactions. For example, talking to an NPC will yield a trigger specific to the interaction.

The C2 trigger itself is tied to a particular entity, whether it is another NPC, or some other object. That object is responsible for keeping track of the global trigger calls, and what is relevant to itself. For example, if a certain trigger is called 3 times, the object must keep track that it has heard those 3 triggers, and act accordingly. As such, two variables are meant to store AI-specific data: scriptmem, scriptmem_float. The scriptmem variable is meant for strings, and the scriptmem_float is for float value. For example, scriptmem_float was used a generic timer (for waiting). On the other hand, scriptmem was used to store how many times the AI has heard a specific trigger by checking and appending keywords onto the string.

Another important thing about AI is the switch between scripted AI and ‘nominal’ AI. Nominal AI is one that is already pre-programmed in C2 where if there are no scripts directing the AI, it will follow a certain logic (which also depends on the type of AI it is). Two things needed to happen. First the AI needed to know which AI it was allowed to switch to, and this was put in a C2 variable called ai. For example, one agent was assigned ai=script,see. This allowed the agent to switch to ‘script’ mode, but also allow state changes to occur when the C2 ‘see player’ trigger was fired. There was a ‘hear player’ trigger that existed, but because this was not included in the variable, the agent did not respond to hearing, only seeing, and only triggers involving scripts. This ai variable assignment is first done in Tiled, and then propagated to the agent during TMX load.

In addition to the ai variable, the agent had to be put into an FSM state called “script” when it is in scripted AI mode, which allows the system to distinguish which part of the AI sequence it is in. The C2 events which constitute the AI for that agent must consider other FSM states, like “idle”, which is often the ending state after a move.

AI is a bigger topic and I will delve into it more when needed.

Grouping

I find, more and more, that groups are quite useful not only in organising and commenting, but allows simpler conditional actions to be done in-game. The only example I have is the deactivation of user input if a particular state is on-going. This makes it trivial to block input rather than having check conditions of state all through the user input event.

SLG movement cost

SLG movement cost functions can actually be quite simple. At first I thought it needed to accommodate many aspects, but in the end, despite the relatively complex requirement of the test AI, pathfinding, at most, needed only to query the LOS status of a tile. Impassability was bypassed by excluding impassable tiles from the MBoard, making pathfinding simpler and, I think, faster.

It’s also probably best to name SLG movement cost functions with the following convention: <char> <purpose> path. Eg: “npc evade path”, or “npc attack path”, whereby in the “npc evade path” the NPC avoids LOS, and “npc attack path” does not avoid LOS at all.

Orthogonal and Isometric measurements

I’ve researched and learned a lot of about how to transfer orthogonal measurements to isometric values. The positional values were simple enough, but the real progress was in computing angles.

Here is a list of important considerations when dealing with isometric stuff:

Converting a C2 object angle (orthogonal space) to an isometric angle (OrthoAngle2IsoAngle). This is used to draw a line in isometric view if that line’s angle was the same as in orthogonal view.

Converting an angle depicted in isometric view to orthogonal space (IsoAngle2OrthoAngle). This is used to determine what an angle would like when viewed from top-down. So when you measure the angle between two points, it’s not truly the angle when viewed in orthogonal space because the isometric view is skewing things. IsoAngle2OrthoAngle allows the reverse computation so that, for example, LOS could be determined for a particular point.

Converting orthogonal XY positions to logical XY (OXY2LXY). There is no Board function that allows this mainly because this is a peculiarity of the way Tiled positions objects of the Board. The positioning of objects is written in orthgonal space, but when Rex’s SquareTx projection is set to isometric, then all measurements become isometric. Thus this function is needed for this lack.

Movement Board and Graphics Board versions of OXY2LXY. This is required because SquareTx for each Board is different, and thus the logical positions will yield a different location.

Computing isometric distance to orthogonal distance. This measures two points in isometric space and gives out the distance as though you were looking from above. This is useful in determining the distance between foreground and background objects. This uses a SquareTx as a point of reference for the width/height ratio, but can use the MBoard or GBoard, because they are assumed to have the same ratio.

Computing snap angle (Angle2SnapeAngle). Looks at the object’s angle, and finds the nearest angle to snap to (assuming 8 directions). This is required so that the proper animation is set.

Converting MBoard logical positions to GBoard logical positions and vice-versa (MLXY2GLXY, GLXY2MLXY). This is very important as it is able to relate the MBoard to the GBoard. Because the MBoard has smaller cell sizes, querying the logical positions of the MBoard using bigger GBoard logical positions will always yield the top-left cell of the MBoard.

Convert GridMove direction to C2 angle (GetGridMoveDirection). The GridMove values are quite different. This function converts it for use with other things, like animation, or other function related to facing, which use the C2 angle, or snap angle.

LOS

The last part of this post is about LOS. I’ve already wrote about some aspects of this. But the main path of the research lay in the following:

A Line-of-sight behaviour is applied to the player.

The player’s facing angle is taken as orthogonal.

An LOS field-of-view is defined (eg 90 degrees) for the player.

At a given angle (facing_direction), left-side and right-side fov lines are drawn based on the defined fov (90 degrees). Note that these lines are virtually drawn orthogonally.

The left and right lines are then converted to isometric angles.

Because the left and right lines have been transformed, the difference between these two angles have changed. This new difference is the new LOS field-of-view.

The center between these two lines is the LOS center line. The player’s LOS is rotated towards the center.

With the new LOS field-of-view, and a new center, this corresponds to an isometric LOS based off a 90-degree LOS when viewed orthogonally.

The facing_direction mentioned above bears special mention. When a player clicks on tile in-game, he is actually picking with a view that he is viewing it in isometric view. Therefore, the facing_directionis an isometric angle, which must be converted to an orthogonal angle. It is only then that the left and right fov lines can be properly oriented, because they, in their turn, will be converted back to isometric after the computation is done.

What needs to be explored

ZSorting seems to take a lot of cpu time (~50%), and I’m wondering whether there is a way I can optimise this. So far, the best solution I’ve come up with is to use On GridMove as a condition for sorting. But I think the most ideal way is to localise the sorting around the areas where movement is taking place.

Synopsis

This post is going to try to be the most definitive guide to setting up the Board system from scratch for the purposes of movement. This means it will hit the following requirements.

Requirements

Maps using Tiled/TMX via TMX Importer V2

Board setup based on TMX reading

SLG Movement for pathfinding

Mandatory objects

AJAX, for reading TMX files

Board

Browser, for logging

Function2M (or any function plugin)

Keyboard, escaping movement

InstanceGroup, for storing path information from SLG

SLG Movement, for tile pathfinding

SquareTX

TMX Importer V2

TMX-XML Parser

Mandatory behaviours

GridMove, for the movers on the grid.

Setup

AJAX calls the tmx to be loaded, which gets it as a string.Then the trigger AJAX:On completed is called.

SquareTx’s position offset is set to (16,16); ie the position offset is the physical coordinates of LogicXY (0,0). In an orthographic setup (which this event sheet screencap is based), the value of 16 refers to the offset so that the center of the tile would be moved inside the layout, and the top-left corner of the upper-left most tile will be aligned squarely at the layout’s (0,0) coordinates.

In an isometric position the map height plays a part.

SLG is configured to use the Board as its Board, and an InstanceGroup (ig).

The mover’s GridMove behaviour is configured to use a particular InstanceGroup for its data.

Make sure that any object that is to be instantiated using the TMX process is destroyed. This makes sure that during the instantiation the proper object is being referenced.

When AJAX completes reading of the tmx, it will trigger its On completed event.

Use the TMX Importer V2 (tmx) to import AJAX.LastData using the XML parser. This populates the tmx object.

Then set the SquareTX’s cell width and height to correspond with the tmx.

Set the Board’s width and height (logical entries) to correspond to the size of the map in the tmx.

Then initiate the tile retrieval.

TMX Data Retrieval

I’ve not yet documented the timings of Objects vs Tile retrieval, so I’m not making any dependence on timings.

Tiles are retrieved first before Objects.

Movable areas

When creating areas for movement, I prefer to create a Tiled layer for movable areas and leave tiles blank where it’s not possible to move on, rather than tagging tiles impassable, so I don’t need to check this during the cost function.

On each tile cell

Use Board:Create tile to instantiate the tiles and place them on the board.

Board: Add chess could also be used, but this is more confusing because it only places a logical ‘marker’, and does not instantiate it.

Configure the frame of the tile (ie id of the tileset).

Note that some it’s not always the case that you can configure the tiles after they’ve been created, for example, re-positioning tiles after instantiation didn’t seem to be reliable or possible. But it seems that instance variables are ok.

TMX tile properties are set as necessary

On each object

Same sort of thing as On each tile cell.

Create using Board:Create chess.

Note: pay attention to the Board z-index as well as the C2 layer.

Configure non-Board related stuff as needed.

Note OXY2LXY, which is the ‘Orthogonal to Logical coordinate function’. To repeat a past post, the TMX Object’s position is recorded in orthogonal coordinates, and the Board or SquareTX object have no convenience features to translate those values to isometric. The OXY2LXY function is this translation:

This completes the TMX retrieval.

Initiating the move

The first thing to consider is the first call to move.

In this case it is a LMB on a tile.

Note ig:Clean group. This removes all previous path entries (in this case it is “path” referring to the waypoint nodes)

The main command is: slg: Get moving path start from <mover> to tile/chess <tile> with moving points to slg.INFINITY and cost to <cost_function> then put result to group <instance_group_name>

<mover> refers to the chess that is already on the Board.

<tile> refers to the tiles on Z=0 on the Board, which is the basis for moving.

Presumably (haven’t checked), if <tile> is at a specific Z index on the Board, then SLG will consider that Z index and pathfind on that level only. But what if the <tile> is at Z=2, for example?

<cost_function> is the cost function of SLG which determines the resulting path. We can also call this a path function.

<instance_group_name> is the group name inside the InstanceGroup object which stores the UIDs of the pathfinding nodes.

Then on the condition that the GridMove is not moving the mover, we pop the first waypoint, which is the first waypointand this is SOL’d as the tile object.

With this SOL, direct GridMove to move to that tile.

This the initial movement phase.

Cost function (moving path function)

Before dealing with the continuation of the move, we must define the cost function of SLG on the mouse click.

The cost function, also called moving path function, is called by SLG when a moving path is required.

The basic definition of a cost function to make set the the return cost to 1.

Returning a cost of SLG.BLOCKING will make this tile impassable

Use slg.TileUID as the reference to the tile being queried for pathfinding.

If the map was generated with blank areas, then there’s no need to check against those, as they won’t be even be considered for pathfinding.

Continuing the move

Once the move has been initiated, then continue to move as long as there are nodes in the InstanceGroup for paths.

The continuation of the move is on the GridMove:On reach target trigger, which is triggered when GridMove moves on top of each tile as stored in the InstanceGroup.

Use the conditionInstanceGroup:Pop one instance <tiles> from group <instance_group_name> in order to determine if it has popped the last one. If it has then GridMove is bypassed.

Movable area function

The movable area function may or may not be used in Citizen 2401, but this is a good time to document this function.

SLG has 2 ‘cost’ functions. One is the movable path, and the other is the movable area.

Focus on the SLG call.

Just like movable path, movable area’s search pattern is to move out from a logical coordinate.

What the events above are trying to do is to generate a list of tiles which the AI can move to that are not LOS’d by the player. The LOS of the tile is determined by another function which switches the los instance variable accordingly, so that only this variable is checked.

The movable area cost function itself (‘p evade area’) does not check for the LOS state, and the reason is described here. Simply put, because of the movable area search ‘creep’ may get blocked by LOS’d tiles, only the tiles are tested on a distance basis (ie movement cost as defined in the SLG:Get moving area)

Then, a filter function is applied on top of the results of the movable area function in order to get rid of those tiles that is LOS’d.

Stopping, changing paths

To stop, simply clear the InstanceGroup path group. This will give GridMove no waypoints to go when GridMove:On reach target is triggered.

When trying to LMB on a tile while still moving, simply clean the Instance path group.

This has the effect of generating a new path while making sure the GridMove still goes to the last assigned waypoint.

This is how I’m dealing with SLG Movement’s pathfinding and the way impassable Tiles and Chess affect it.

The goal is summarised thus: When I click on an impassable Tile, my intention is to find a path to the Tile even though I may not finally reach the final Tile.

The problem is that SLG Movement’s cost function, which is the function evaluating the path, will always include the destination as part of its results to InstGroup. It’s no use trying to define a BLOCKING cost for it: SLG Movement will always include the destination Tile.

I tried poppping instances from InstGroup, but the methods in InstGroup did not easily allow me (as far as I could see, anyway) to pop the tail end of the InstGroup array.

What I ended up doing was querying whether Tile being moved on to was impassable or not. If not, GridMove is stopped from moving..